RTGS system to become 24×7 from December 14 – Times of India

NEW DELHI: In a bid to give a push to digital payments, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) on Tuesday notified that RTGS (Real Time Gross Settlement) system will become 24×7 from December 14.
In an official release, the central bank said: “In accordance with RBI’s statement on development and regulatory policies announced in its monetary policy meet on October 9, RTGS will be available round the clock on all days of the year. Accordingly, RTGS 24x7x365 will be launched with effect from 00:30 hours on December 14, 2020.”
The notification comes days after RBI governor Shaktikanta Das announced statement and resolution of the monetary policy committee (MPC) in its December review meet.
“India will become one of the few countries in the world to operate its RTGS system round the clock throughout the year,” the RBI circular noted.
In December 2019, the National Electronic Funds Transfer (NEFT) system was also made available on a 24x7x365 basis.
RTGS is meant for large-value instantaneous fund transfers, while NEFT is used for fund transfers of up to Rs 2 lakh.
With this, RTGS transfers will be available for customers and inter-bank transactions round the clock, except for the interval between ‘end-of-day’ and ‘start-of-day’ processes, whose timings would be duly broadcasted through the system.
RTGS — which began its operations on March 26, 2004 with a soft launch involving four banks — presently handles 6.35 lakh transactions daily for a value of Rs 4.17 lakh crore across 237 participant banks. The average ticket size for RTGS in November 2020 was Rs 57.96 lakh making it a truly large value payment system, the RBI said.
“Round the clock availability of RTGS will provide extended flexibility to businesses for effecting payments and will enable introduction of additional settlement cycles in ancillary payment systems. This can also be leveraged to enhance operations of Indian financial markets and cross-border payments,” the central bank added.